Art Chantry: Parkland is Burning!!!!!!

 Graphic designer Art Chantry has a show opening tonight at the best gallery in Tacoma: Fulcrum Gallery. I'm going to the opening and dragging a few kids along so they can get a thrill looking at Art's amazing rock posters and album covers and get another thrill hearing a regular grown-up drop F-bombs all over the room.

Tacoma, my home town, has an amazing arts scene right now. And an amazing writing scene, too. Being active in both scenes feels like such a gift. Time will tell, but it really feels like a significant place, a significant time and a significant group of people. Like Chicago during the Ashcan School days of the nineteen teens or Harlem in the renaissance days of the 1920s or New York and L.A. in the Pop Art days of the 1960s. Tacoma's scene is more industrial. As much craft as it is art. With grease stains, sweat stains and shot-glass stains fully intact.

Most people associate Art Chantry with Seattle in the 1980s. Grunge. The Rocket. That's fine. Associate away. But Art is the first to admit he is a Tacoma boy--or more accurately, a Parkland boy. And he's also the loudest and angriest to claim that most great cultural things the Northwest claims start in my town.

Tacoma is an incubator. Art happens to be one its best-laid eggs. Come check out the show.